* Out of all the great stuff on the H.A.M.B. lately, this post stands out: Terri Hollenbeck, the daughter of Andy Brizio, recently raided the family album for some shots of her as a child hanging out in some of the wild show rods that Andy had a hand in creating or that Andy displayed alongside. For example, Terri seems to be lounging in the cab of Barris’s Lil’ Redd Wrecker, though I don’t know the story on why it’s blue in this photo.

* We all know Hudson had a sedan pickup that predated the Ranchero and El Camino by a couple decades, and as it turns out, Reo had a similar sedan pickup in the late 1920s and early 1930s, rated at half a ton. Kisber Enterprises of Memphis, Tennessee, found this one and is in the process of restoring it.

* For some reason, we Americans still can’t seem to get over the fact that Russia did indeed have a car industry, and that means they did indeed have a car culture, which inevitably leads to automotive junkyards. So even though they shouldn’t be as much a curiosity as they are, we’re still awed by this collection of photos of a Russian junkyard on English Russia, which reports that such junkyards are a rarity there because any vehicle, new or old, is hard to obtain and thus very desirable. (The original source for the photos, netwinds.ru, seems to be down.) (via)

* Keeping with the Russian vehicle theme, Jesse found this photo of a motorcyclist next to a monster of a truck, but found no description to go along with it. The source post, when translated from Italian, seems only concerned with the bike. And as Jesse points out, the attachment at the top of the truck looks like it came off a cable car, suggesting the truck runs on electricity. Can any of our Russian friends decipher the writing on the side of the dump bed?

* And finally, via the New Cafe (Racer) Society, a photo of a mad scientist on a monowheel attempting to merge with traffic, a Loomis Dean photo from the LIFE image archive. Funny thing is that I haven’t yet found it either in the Google Images LIFE archive or in the archive on LIFE’s own website, though via the latter, I found a couple more images of the same monowheel and mention that Walter Nilsson built the monowheel in 1935. The Chevrolet in the photo above dates from at least 1949, and the man in the photo appears not to be Nilsson, so we’re left wondering why a 14-year-old monowheel had been trotted out for LIFE’s lensman.

It’s electric, and that setup is straight off the electric trolley buses still in use to this day in many Russian cities (done my share of time on them). Considering the knock-you-to-the-floor-better-hold-tight torque the buses have, I’d bet this was a torque-monster of a dump truck. “Groba” means coffin. I’m not sure what the letters on the second line (transliterated to English “HTTU”) would refer to. My curiosity is piqued. Maybe someone else will add more detail.

In the 1960s and possibly now, the Russians had a number goods vehicles which used the trolleybus wires. In Moscow there were delivery trucks which used to disappear into underground facilities in the city which I believe were storage for goods.

That Russian “junkyard” is in reality one man’s private collection, and from what I’ve gathered he’s not selling anything. He’s got quite a few rare and unusual items there, but since everything is outdoors, everything will likely decline in condition.

The “trolley-truck” (“cable car” is entirely the wrong term) is just one of several electric dump lines built around the world. Some were even used in the US.